WHO chief criticise the trend of vaccine diplomacy

The World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom has criticised the trend of “vaccine diplomacy”, slamming countries for using Covid-19 vaccines to gain competitive advantage rather than engaging in cooperation. “Vaccine diplomacy is not cooperation,” he said. “We cannot defeat this pandemic through competition. If you compete for resources... then the virus gets the advantage.”  said that the planet was seeing a plateauing in the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths, with declines being observed in most regions including the Americas and Europe, the two regions worst-affected by the coronavirus pandemic. “But it’s an unacceptably high plateau, with more than 5.4 million reported Covid-19 cases and almost 90,000 deaths last week,” the WHO’s director-general Tedros Adhanom warned.

WHO  also said that the oronavirus B.1.617 is a global variant of concern. “There is some available information to suggest increased transmissibility of the B.1.617,” Maria Van Kerkove, the WHO scientist has said. Meanwhile, the Centre on Wednesday said that WHO has not classified this variant as "Indian". "In fact, the word 'Indian' has not been used in its report on the matter," the Centre said. WHO also clarified that it recognises variants by their scientific names, not by the names of the countries where they originated from. WHO has classified B.1.617 as a variant of global concern, but many reports termed the mutant as "Indian variant", which is unfounded and without any basis, the Centre said. This variant is the fourth "variant of concern" after those detected in Britain, Brazil and South Africa. It was added to the list as it "appears to be transmitting more easily than the original virus", it said.

WHO does not identify viruses or variants with names of countries they are first reported from. We refer to them by their scientific names and request all to do the same for consistency. @PTI_News @PIB_India @ANI @timesofindia @htTweets @IndianExpress @the_hindu @MoHFW_INDIA

— WHO South-East Asia (@WHOSEARO) May 12, 2021